


Lethe in Acheron

by viv_is_spooky



Series: Down to the Root [8]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: And Abstract Language, Avatar-Typical Feeding on Fear, But A Heavy One, Death, Gen, Oneshot, Ria is Extremely Dramatic OK?, Set in S5, She's Awful and I Love Her, The Corpse Roots, The End's Fear Domain, Web-Typical Emphasis on Lack of Autonomy, a lot of metaphors, a quick read, post-eyepocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24782155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viv_is_spooky/pseuds/viv_is_spooky
Summary: The Casualty used to be human. She isn’t anymore. She is a silkspun embodiment of the fear of "normal" demise.
Series: Down to the Root [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792387
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	Lethe in Acheron

**Author's Note:**

> Song Recommendation: “Cemetery Girls” by Schoolyard Heroes 
> 
> ( _”The soil soaked with tears and blood my dear nobody's safe/.../Look into my eyes the world is over now/Cemetery Girls/We will rise tonight while they are dying slowly/Cemetery Girls/Lovely widows of a broken world/.../Did you pray? Well you can't stop it now/Why would you waste another word on God?“_ )

The Casualty likes this new world she’s found herself in. It’s elating, traipsing between lives that march towards an inevitable end. This dying, and breaking, and inhalation of fear as it flows from the marionette souls traveling unwillingly along the corpse roots.

Patient, bloodblack death underfoot defines and pushes her existence, her performances day in and day out – if days even exist anymore.

She can’t say she’d miss days if they ceased to exist, so perhaps they already have. The only mundane things that serve her are those that can be twisted into threats, and time is a threat whether the sun sets or simply watches.

The lens of the Eye cannot keep webs from spinning, nor can it prevent its own eventual demise.

In her series of performances, the Casualty comes across beings who once belonged to the End, those who fed it just as much by being  _ afraid _ of it as by causing death themselves. Those like Tova McHugh and Justin Gough, who foolishly tried to outsmart the End and ended up making sacrifices for it instead. Pulsing roots move their feet forwards now, towards demises so very human it’s laughable.

A mundane, pointless end for the faux humanitarian who couldn’t fathom having her life snuffed out by a slippery shower floor.

A mundane, pointless end for the imbecilic camper whose cherry-red blood curdled with carbon monoxide years ago.

The Casualty has always considered them so, so silly. It only seems fitting that they are now as trapped by their patron as she is freed by it.

She is free because she accepts what must be, free because there is freedom in knowing you cannot know what controls you. She is freer than those who fight amongst themselves about destiny, than those who live in fear.

Freedom, after all, is an illusion. But it’s also a state of mind.

Each snap of her bones, each gash in her skin, each terminal wound that blooms from her existence is a tug at the threads of fate – an inspiration of dread, an aid and offering to the Weaver and the Coroner who oversee her work.

She wonders sometimes, in between deaths, if she’ll come across her parents here. If they travel routes along the roots. Perhaps they’ll call out to her, beg her to save them, scream the name they gave her as a plea. As if association will help them – as if it will help  _ anyone _ . As if there was ever any point to the fear they tried to fill her childhood with.

It will not matter if they call her name. The sound doesn’t have much meaning for her anymore.

The Casualty used to be human. She isn’t anymore. She used to be Ria Mirti, but now she is so much more:

A thread that commands the attention of eyes as she topples down simulated stairs. A spiderweb trap that forces witnesses to watch as her head splits open on the ground. A mess of bloody marionette strings carrying out a series of ways one can die just by walking down the street.

A silkspun embodiment of the fear of  _ normal _ demise.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Context of the Title:  
> \- https://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/PotamosLethe.html  
> \- https://pantheon.org/articles/a/acheron.html


End file.
